Dearest, will the world be more bearable to you when I am out of it?  It is selfish of me not to wish so, since I can satisfy you in this so soon!  Every day I will try to make it my wish:  or wish that it may be so when the event comes—­not a day before.  Till then let it be more bearable that I am still alive:  grant me, dearest, that one little grace while I live!

Bearable!  My sorrow is bearable, I suppose, because I do bear it from day to day:  otherwise I would declare it not to be.  Don’t suffer as I do, dearest, unless that will comfort you.

One thing is strange, but I feel quite certain of it:  when I heard that I carried death about in me, scarcely an arm’s-length away, I thought quickly to myself that it was not the solution of the mystery.  Others might have thought that it was:  that because I was to die so soon, therefore I was not fit to be your wife.  But I know it was not that.  I know that whatever hopes death in me put an end to, you would have married me and loved me patiently till I released you, as I am to so soon.

It is always this same woe that crops up:  nothing I can ever think can account for what has been decreed.  That too is a secret:  mine comes to meet it.  When it arrives shall I know?

And not a word, not a word of this can reach you ever!  Its uses are wrung out and drained dry to comfort me in my eternal solitude.

Good-night; very soon it will have to be good-by.

LETTER LXXXI.

Beloved:  I woke last night and believed I had your arms round me, and that all storms had gone over me forever.  The peace of your love had inclosed me so tremendously that when I was fully awake I began to think that what I held was you dead, and that our reconciliation had come at that great cost.

Something remains real of it all, even now under the full light of day:  yet I know you are not dead.  Only it leaves me with a hope that at the lesser cost of my own death, when it comes, happiness may break in, and that whichever of us has been the most in poor and needy ignorance will know the truth at last—­the truth which is an inseparable need for all hearts that love rightly.

Even now to me the thought of you is a peace passing all understanding.  Beloved, Beloved, Beloved, all the greetings I ever gave you gather here, and are hungry to belong to you by a better way than I have ever dreamed.  I am yours, till something more than death swallows me up.

LETTER LXXXII.

Dearest:  If you will believe any word of mine, you must not believe that I have died of a broken heart should science and the doctors bring about a fulfillment of their present prophesyings concerning me.

I think my heart has held me up for a long time, not letting me know that I was ill:  I did not notice.  And now my body snaps on a stem that has grown too thin to hold up its weight.  I am at the end of twenty-two years:  they have been too many for me, and the last has seemed a useless waste of time.  It is difficult not to believe that great happiness might have carried me over many more years and built up for me in the end a renewed youth:  I asked that quite frankly, wishing to know, and was told not to think it.